This is a continuity of the Taiwanese stories (http://thetaiwanese.blogspot.com/) where the blog started in 2005. This site also serves as links to that original site. I began with the story of Dr. Beeby to whom we, the Taiwanese, owed so much. Beeby's unquestionable love of Taiwan was beyond description. Now the latest story is about an European American Taiwanese Dr. Gelzer who passed away a week after the historical election victory of the Taiwanese people in 1-16-2016.

Saturday, February 6, 2016

Rev. Dr. David Gelzer 郭大衛牧師.

郭大衛牧師

Rev. Dr. David
Gelzer

1919-2016

The first time I met Dr. Gelzer was at the campus of the Tainan
Theological Seminary in 1975 when he was a visiting professor of theology and I
was a pastor of the near by Tung-Ning Church where a lot of college and high
school students gathered (including the SCM member students from Cheng-Kung
University.) Soon afterward, Rev. and
Mrs. Gelzer were seen often in the Tung Ning church while Ms. Brown (a long
time British missionary/campus minister) helped them understand the church services
especially during the sermon.

I remember that during the introduction, Dr. Hsiao, then the
president of the Seminary, told us that Gelzer was primary teaching the
theology of the African and the theology of Reformation since he was working
and teaching in the western part of Africa (Cameroon) as a missionary for more than twenty years. From the casual
conversation with the seminary students (I was also a part time lecturer then)
I learned that Gelzer was virtually also teaching the [theology of hope] in the
biblical sense. After all, without
faith, hope and love, what is left there then?

I learned a little news of Dr. Gelzer after I came to the States
for further study in 1976 that he was very much involved with the struggle of
the Taiwanese political movements in general and the Presbyterian Church
clergy/members involvements in particular, especially during the so called
Kaohsiung (Formosan) Incident in 1979. Gelzer
must have been standing closely with the Taiwanese, the Presbyterian Church ministers and the
members who suffered the unnecessary imprisonments – just because they wanted
their voices to be heard.

Then the next thing I heard was that Dr. and Mrs.
Gelzer were expelled by the KMT in 1984, ten years after their service started
in Taiwan
as missionary.

Shortly after my retirement, I talked with Gelzer over the phone
briefly. His major concern was still the
churches and the people in Taiwan
as if he was from Taiwan,
and was of Taiwan.

Dr. Gelzer was not the first missionary been expelled from Taiwan. There were some British Presbyterian
Missionaries and United States Reformed Church and Presbyterian Church missionaries
left Taiwan that way too. Let us hope
that Gelzer would be among the last incident of the expelled missionary
elsewhere.

After all, before his passing away on 1-23-2016, Dr. Gelzer must
have heard or sensed the major change in Taiwan
during the presidential election in 1-16-2016 where the KMT suffered a complete
election defeat in the modern history of Taiwan.

Dr. Gelzer had spent ten years in Taiwan as a PC-USA teaching
missionary. Yet he must have won, known
to him or not, million Taiwanese hearts along the way.